The new Formula has been found to be an expanded version of the Power Trio which consists of two opposing sides and a mediator in the middle. The Team Of Five consists of two pairs of opposition and one center/mediator, a less specific Five-Man Band as it were. All of the regular additions to the formula still apply such as The Sixth Ranger who usually becomes a second mediator or another opposing force to any other of the other pairs.

This is now a super trope about teams of five that are too general to fit the Five-Man Band mold and the following are sub-tropes to be created soon.

Hellsing might be a type I: Alucard and Walter as one group, Seras and Pip in the other group, and Integra is the fifth member, often a mediator.

Sucker Punch: Rocket, Sweat Pea and Babydoll being the obvious power trio, and the remaining two as a set of foils.

Avatar the Last Airbender, becomes an example of this. The original three stay in their roles but Toph and Zuko become just as important to the group. They're the foils: Calm/angry, solid stone/empheral fire, short/tall. They both have eye issues and contrasting relations with Iroh.

Final Fantasy X, the original five people that leave Besaid are an example. Wakka is the talkative optimist, Lulu is the less talkative cynist, Yuna mediates and holds them together, Tidus and Kilmarhi are the foils. cheerful/stoic. human/Ronso, sword/spear. All of them are equally important, though the foils tend to have private problems.

Tsubasa Resevor Chronicle: Kurogane and Fai are the foils. They contrast each other and interact with each other far more often then the trio: Sakura Syaoran and Mokona. Sakura is happy and helps people, Syaoran is focused on his goal largely to the exclusion of other things, Mokona directs the group.

Type 2

InuYasha another Type II, one group is Inuyasha and Kagome, another is Miroku and Sango, and then Shippo is the fifth member.

Zerono Tsukaima is a type II or type I depending on the episode. Type II it's Louise and Saito is one group, Kirche and Tabitha, and Guiche is the fifth. Type I it's Louise Saito and Henrietta/Siesta, as the group of three and Kirche and Tabitha as foils.

Gundam Wing, the Gundam pilots are a Type II: Heero and Duo are one set, Trowa and Quatre are another set and Wufei is the fifth member.

Teen Titans is a good example of Type 2. While people have been running in circles trying to Five-Man Band them, they fit in this broader trope becuase the team dynamic tends to be Starfire (super emotional optimist) is opposite to Raven (emotionless cynic). Beast Boy (funny coward who acts smart but isn't) is opposite to Cyborg (aggressive offensive fighter who acts dumb but is really smart). Robin is the center between the four personalities.

(Maybe) The main girls from Sucker Punch didn't Five-Man Band out so well but iron out a lot better as a Type II, I think: Sweet Pea and Rocket are a set of foils (disillusionment and loyalty/protectiveness against optimism and the desire to run away, with or without her sister), Amber and Blondie (fear and willingness to risk all for the Nakama in spite of it versus the flirty, outgoing one who became the Sixth Ranger Traitor), with Babydoll as the fulcrum (she brings the quest, leads the team, kicks the most butt, and is the only one who is untouched by the system's real abuses).

Dead Like Me: George and Mason are foils. Lethargic/energetic. Rational/quirky Daisy and Roxy are foils. Girly/doesn't care about apperance. Bitchy/badass Rube, their boss, has to mediate.

Another example that just came to mind:
Law And Order Special Victims Unit: Munch (intellectual, paranoid, wealthy, witty) is opposed by Finn (can be smart but often seems to chose not to be, bitter and sarcastic, makes really really bad jokes, definitely not wealthy). Olivia (naive, trusting, helpful to the point of being a burden, wants a family but has none) is opposed by Stabler (cynical, enraged, suspicious of everyone, is burdened by a large family) both pairs mediated by Craigen. I suspect you'll find a lot of these examples in Crime Drama shows.

LAOSVU is probably a good example because it is definitely not a five man band. Olivia is Elliot's right-hand man? The four dectives are equals, two sets of partners.
Another good example would probably be Stargate SG 1 where you have Captain Samantha Carter the Ph.D. in theoretical astrophysics against cool veteran Colonel Jack O'Neil and Daniel Jackson Ph.D. who is a civilian archeologist and linguist and acts as the team's moral center against emotionalless warrior alien Tealc. Major General George Hammond is their commander and mediator.

Maybe it is, maybe it's more (even though I'm not even sure that Four Temperament Ensemble should be a trope -see it's discussion). I don't know about Teen Titans but Animorphs, Law And Order Special Victims Unit and Stargate SG 1 each have six members who work together. In SVU the District Attorneys are foil to Captain Cragin, and in SGSG 1 the medic might be foil to General Hammond. In Animorphs waring Rachel foils gentle Cassie, responsible Jake foils smart-aleck Marco while noble Ax foils bird-boy Tobias.

I really like this, I really do. Lots of shows (like the ones listed above) have five core members but they're not a five man band. This trope will provide a place for those examples because its a lot more flexible than the Five Man Band. This way no one's forced into a role they're not.

At the same time, many Five Man Bands do not have exactly five members because two or more characters can share a role, or a character can fill more than one role. But this trope must have exactly five team members (at least until any Sixth Rangers join).

The example of teen titans you have up there is kind of wrong. Beast Boy practically never opposes cyborg. I can't think of a single notable instance where he has, in fact they are often seen together enjoying the same things. If its anything, the three males make up a Power Trio with Beast Boy the Id, Robin the Ego and Cyborg the Superego, and the two girls are foils as Red Oni Blue Oni.

Power Quintet? Sounds like Five Man Band is a subtrope. I hope this will help correct the misuse of Sixth Ranger to mean "the character left over after a six-person team is plugged into a Five Man Band that isn't a Team Pet, Tagalong Kid or The Mentor"; it's more specific than that. (Even the OP misuses Sixth Ranger this way.) Belkar is not a Sixth Ranger (he's more of a Big Guy than Durkon is), Miko even less so except in the context of the OOTS itself(considering we basically never see more than two named members of the Sapphire Guard team together at a time, do they even count for this trope?).

I've been toying around an idea that in some six-person Five Man Bands, there isn't so much a Sixth Ranger as a second Lancer, and the two Lancers serve as the superego and id in a Power Trio. (This solves the somewhat-minor problem that Spock's and McCoy's roles aren't typically opposed to each other, without sacrificing Spock's Lancer role in favor of The Smart Guy, if we can find roles for the other TOS characters.) Belkar thus finds at least an occasional role as the Id Lancer (or The Mc Coy, if you will).

^ Usually it seems like after the Sixth Ranger has fully integrated into the group, he invariably isn't the Sixth Ranger anymore and becomes a Second lancer or even replaces The Lancer.

We should just have a trope that is Ensemble Mashup, where groups of over 4 are made up of Power Trios and Red Oni Blue Onis. That is to say, groups of 2s and 3s, or applying to those tropes, just having more than one person fill each role.

If Splinter or April ever joins the [[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]] it becomes this, Leo opposes Raph, Don opposes Mike, and Spliter or April meditates. If Casey comes in then Leo becomes the mediator and Casey will oppse Raph.

Side note by opposing I'm assuming we don't mean antagonistic relationship as much as complementary personalities.

What this boils down to in most preexisting Fiveman bands is the complementary nature of the Hero and Lancer and the Big/Tough Guy and Small/Smart guy, and the new mediator is the former chick.

Really this helps because the 'hero' personality type doesn't have to match up to main character/leader. and the chick is separated from being intuitively female or only good for team stability but generally useless in practical situations.

Back to the Teen Titans example this makes it so Starfire and Raven are then 'Hero and Lancer', Cyborg and Beastboy are 'Big Guy and Small Guy', and Robin is 'the Chick.'

@Noir, You misunderstand me, though with my wording it's understandable I didn't mean oppose like a rivalry or that they're not friendly with one another, opposition is sort of character role or position.They don't need to be in opposition to one another just opposites. In fact, the second way you put it is pretty much exactly what is trying to be conveyed here.

Acrobox's extrapolation of the Teen Titans example suggests we would need to rename the roles vis-a-vis Five Man Band, especially since The Lancer is defined almost entirely in terms of opposition to the hero (meaning if The Hero is no longer the hero, The Lancer can mean anything), and I'm not sure we should have separate tropes for anything other than the "mediator" role. That would allow this trope to accomodate any Power Trio you can imagine: the "intellectual" Power Trio (Kirk/Mc Coy, Bubbles as the ego, Superman as the ego), the "psychological" or "idealistic" Power Trio (Blossom as the ego, Wonder Woman as the ego), Beauty Brains And Brawn, and so on. (My idea above can be seen as having one "intellectual" or "psychological" trio with the Hero and Lancers, and the other three fill the Beauty Brains And Brawn roles nicely.)

Just got another OOTS-related idea. Just re-read the commentary to Dungeon Crawlin' Fools (the first compilation) and it seems the OOTS was originally conceived like this:

However, the commentary also explains that Haley was originally intended as a foil for Roy, "someone as smart as he was who used her powers for greed", which would seem to put her in the Lancer role (especially since her "glue that holds the team together" role only developed later), and puts Durkon in the Chick role (since V was a last-minute addition to the cast). But making Elan and Belkar the Big Guy and Smart Guy is problematic (can you make either the Smart Guy? Can you put Elan in either role?), not least because it doesn't get across their roles in forming a Power Trio with Roy.

At any rate, this suggests that we can have something like "three pairs" with one pair mediating between the other two pairs while also playing off each other, or a Double Trio with two power trios that also intersect with each other. The OOTS (especially as it is now) is actually rather hard to pin down to precise roles, since each member of the cast embodies different aspects of several Five Man Band roles at once. Perhaps a rotating power trio, with different characters serving as egos in several intersecting power trios, so (going in superego-ego-id order) ABC could be a trio, but so could DCB or CDE? I'm just spitballing and throwing random ideas onto the page at this point.

Maybe Team Of Five should explain all the various possibilities, so we don't have to try and make a trope for each. Just have like Type I, Type 2 and so on. just try to be concise and organized about it, don't want huge walls of unbroken text.

Hmm, so I was reading Discussion under Five Man Band and I've somewhat modified my stance on this Trope. I think it may be that each incarnation needs its own page with additional information as to how it relates to other ensemble tropes. Also, Compare Four Philosophy Ensemble ^^

The main girls from Sucker Punch didn't Five Man Band out so well because no one really fit being The Smart Guy, and while one was certainly The Chick, she wasn't hardly The Heart. It irons out a lot better as a Type II, I think: Sweet Pea and Rocket are a set of foils (disillusionment and loyalty/protectiveness against optimism and the desire to run away, with or without her sister), Amber and Blondie (fear and willingness to risk all for the Nakama in spite of it versus the flirty, outgoing one who became the Sixth Ranger Traitor), with Babydoll as the fulcrum (she brings the quest, leads the team, kicks the most butt, and is the only one who is untouched by the system's real abuses).

Doc Savage and his four companions were modeled on a "Five Temperament" theory of human nature. The temperaments were muscular, cerebral, gastronomic, thoracic, and osseous. Doc was muscular, Long Tom the electrical expert was cerebral, Ham was thoracic, Monk was gastronomic, and Johnny was osseous.

There's nothing wrong with Five Man Band. It's just that people try to shoe-horn any group of five or more characters into it when they don't actually fit, possibly because it's one of the only 5 group tropes. This is just recognizing there are more group tropes than just Five Man Band to cover groups of Five and up.

So if you guys want to help with examples, please comb the works you know that are listed as examples in Five Man Band (because at least half of them shouldn't be there anyway), and if they fit one of these types better or just as well, then posting 'em up. Found some:

Harry Potter: The Golden Trio of Harry, Hermione and Ron...plus Luna and Ginny as foils. That's a Type I

Wheel Of Time: Mostly in the first book, another Type One. The Three Ta'veren: Rand, Perrin and Mat, plus the female foils Egwene and Nynaeve.

Hellsing might be a type I: Alucard and Walter as one group, Seras and Pip in the other group, and Integra is the fifth member, often a mediator.

Inu Yasha another Type II, one group is Inuyasha and Kagome, another is Miroku and Sango, and then Shippo is the fifth member.

Zerono Tsukaima is a type II or type I depending on the episode. Type II it's Louise and Saito is one group, Kirche and Tabitha, and Guiche is the fifth. Type I it's Louise Saito and Henrietta/Siesta, as the group of three and Kirche and Tabitha as foils.

Gundam Wing, the Gundam pilots are a Type II: Heero and Duo are one set, Trowa and Quatre are another set and Wufei is the fifth member.

Outlaw Star: Type II, sort of its actually three sets, two of which intersect. Jene and Jim, Jene and melfina and Aisha and Setsuna are foils.

If this is still going, Kampfer has two Type 2s, as we have the initial set (Shizuku (Brain), Mikoto (Brawn), Natsuru (The Chick), and Akane (Blood Knight) as the foil sets and Sakura as the middle person but not exactly moderator); and the second set (Rika (The Child), Hitomi (Tomboy), Ryoka (The Chick), and Sayaka (Indecisive) as the foils, and Sakura yet again as the moderator).

yeah, i was thinking the same thing. really all people want is somewhere to list who they think is The Big GuyThe LancerThe Mentor etc. having a numerical limit lost meaning after a while.
should it be its own, or expanded into Cast Calculus

I like the idea of this... but won't it immediately get wrong examples shoehorned in too?

The main problem with Five Man Band is that any show with 3 - 10 protagonists in it is somehow shoehorned into a five man band despite having nowhere near five members. The same would apply here.

Indeed, the first example here is from Harry Potter - but Harry Potter is not about a five man team. It is rather silly to suggest that Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Luna form a team, because they never do, and because there are several other characters that are just as important as Ginny and Luna.

I don't want to argue about HP here, but the point is: five means five. If a show doesn't have a team of exactly five members (not counting temporary hangers-on), then it's not this trope.

The Team already covers every combination of roles, multiple roles, foils, genders, and overall team members, i think we can let these other 'Fix Five Man Band' tropes die out, and just let the original Five Man Band stay as the original golden template

The trope name is bad; I can't know the difference between "Five Man Band" and "Team Of Five" by looking at the trope names.

Intersecting Power Trios belong on the Power Trio page; they don't count as teams of five.

The concept is Not A Trope. Do we intend to launch Team Of Four, Team Of Six, Team Of Seven, and so on?

"Power Trio Plus Two" and "Two Pairs Of Foils And A Fifth" might still work as new tropes. Three Plus Two says that it forms a Five Man Band; we might need to launch a new trope for Power Trio Plus Two That Is Not A Five Man Band.

^^ FMB is five characters (no more, no less) who are an actual team of some sort (and with no other team members), with one (and exactly one) character in each of The Leader, The Lancer, The Big Guy, The Smart Guy, and The Chick roles. The Chick must be female, and there can be no more than one other female on the team.

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